


Queen of Air and Darkness

by Chaos_Greymistchild



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Gen, Panic Attacks, child of the mountain frost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-17 00:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19328908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaos_Greymistchild/pseuds/Chaos_Greymistchild
Summary: He has always watched over her, inhuman, invisible, quiet, powerful, unnamed.





	Queen of Air and Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic written solely to sate my own desperate desire for inhuman characters who act and think in inhuman ways. This was also written to sate my Salt for how little Elsa's OP-ness was exploited, but I guess I didn't get around to it, lols. Maybe another time.

Elsa glanced to the side as unsuspiciously as she could.

He was there as usual, tall and silent, illusory tails waving absently.

“What are you looking at, Elsa?” her father asked, worried.

She smiled at him, quick and fleeting, and glanced down at her gloved hands. “It’s nothing.”

He reached over the table to place a hand over hers. “Everything will be alright, we’ll only be gone for a very short time, you’ll hate your sudden loss of freedom when we come back, I can promise you that.”

 

 

He had never come back.

 

 

Elsa looked to the side, unafraid of anyone seeing her staring at nothing. He hadn’t changed at all, was still the same as he was all those years ago when she had gotten the news and he had spoken for the first time. “There are sharks in the water now,” he had told her, “Learn to be the frozen surface of the sea that cages them.”

Perhaps the only thing that had changed about him were the clothes he wore now, midnight blue embroidered on black robes, a startlingly crimson sash tying it closed, a black-ribbed fan of an identical shade of blue, and a ribbon tying his hair back from his face.

He snapped his too-sharp teeth at her when he noticed that she was staring. She turned her attention back to the sceptre and ball in front of her. She took off her gloves slowly. She could feel all of his inhuman stare burning a whole on her back as she reached out for cold metal with bare hands.

“Control,” she muttered under her breath, “control, conceal,” she chanted softly.

She felt the cool metal heat under her hands, could feel the biting, crackling ice of her power push against her fingers, straining her control.

The heat of her hands died an abrupt death, ice crawling out of her fingers to grow on the metal.

She dropped them.

Mist fogged the air, her breath turned to ice.

She pulled on the gloves in a rush, gasping for breath. Her chest was too tight, her head swam, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t--

A hand pressed against her chest. She gasped in a deep breath.

“Breathe,” his voice murmured, deep and soothing.

Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.

Her vision cleared slowly of the white haze of panic and oxygen deprivation.

His ears twitched for a moment before stilling. His tail swished in a movement she had learnt meant agitation, before he was tugging pointedly at her gloves.

“Kit,” he murmured, “you can do this.”

She shook her head, tears almost slipping down her cheeks before she blinked them away. “Can’t lose control,” she gasped, “can’t can’t can’t”

He let out a growl of frustration and sat on her. Leaned down and put teeth on her throat in a threat. She stilled. He pulled away. “Be like a glacier,” he told her, familiar words drummed into her like a heartbeat, “innocuous and unassuming on the surface, deep and powerful underneath. Feel the ice flow through your fingers,” he instructed, “and do not fight it, let it taste the fresh air, then tuck it away into your heart, to be fluid, silent, and crushing as an ice floe.”

“Try again,” he whispered.

She again reached for those deceptively light symbols of power.

 

 

“Elsa—I mean, your majesty,” Anna corrected, giddy and flush with delight, clutching the arm of a handsome man in white. “This is—may I present Prince Hans of the Southern Isles,”

“Your majesty,” Prince Hans bowed, a charming smile on his face.

She smiled.

“We would like,” they spoke over each other, paused, giggled, “that is--”

“Your blessing,” Hans spoke up first, then Anna chorusing with him, “for our marriage,”

"Marriage? I’m sorry, I’m so confused,”

“Well we haven’t worked out all the details yet...” Elsa allowed the two to babble at each other as she tried to gather her thoughts.

“Slow down,” she told them, “No one’s brothers are staying here, and no one is getting married. You can’t marry a man you just met!”

“You can if it’s True Love!” Anna retorted, almost shouting. She could _hear_ the capitalisations.

A polite cough from behind.

“Excuse me, your majesty, Princess Anna, Prince Hans,” a familiar voice interrupted from behind her.

She whirled around.

He was there. He was there, and everyone else could see him now. He was there, everyone could see him now, and he had changed his outfit.

Midnight blue robes, the white of an under robe peeking out from under his collar, a black skirt-thing, a black over robe with some sort of crest embroidered on it, familiar fan clutched in his right hand, large round spectacles perched on his nose, red ceremonial paint running parallel under his eyes, hair completely unbound, and ears and tail tucked away and hidden from sight somehow.

“Lord Daiki Shiroko, of the Land of Light and Shadow,” he introduced with a bow. Anna and Hans hurried to return the bow with a curtsy and bow of their own, while she dipped her head in a shallow bow, as befitting her newly-endowed status.

“I couldn’t help but overhear your argument,” he hesitated, “though I doubt many could have avoided hearing it,” he admonished lightly.

Anna coughed nervously into her fist.

She put a restraining hand on his arm and moved to step pointedly between him and Anna, while turning to show her side to Hans. His eyes glimmered thoughtfully, and he flicked his fan half-open to rest by his left elbow and clasp his right elbow lightly with his left hand.

“Do we need to take this somewhere else?” She asked Anna.

“Err, here is- fine.”

Hans nodded, not glancing away from him.

“As I said, I couldn’t help but overhear all of this, and thought if I may propose a solution other than a hard ‘no’?”

“By all means,” she told him, suddenly tired and weary.

“It is to my knowledge that Arendelle also supports the tradition of ‘engagements’?” He phrased the statement into a question.

She nodded.

“Then may I suggest that Princess Anna and Prince Hans consider deciding on a particularly long engagement period, and for Princess Anna be properly proposed to, as I also note an absence of the rings those of Arendelle use to propose their engagement status?”

She slanted a narrowed, sideways glance at Hans that she had learnt from himself, letting her doubt in him show very obviously to those nobles twittering in the wings observing.

“I do hope that you are planning to treat Anna with all the courtesy owed to her, Princess of Arendelle and my beloved sister,” she schooled her expression into something stern and full of barely concealed condescension.

Hans smiled nervously, eyes flickering between her and his narrowed eyes and fan-covered smile. “Of course,” Hans said, quailing beneath their combined presence.

She clapped her hands loudly, catching everyone’s attention again. “Proceed,” she ordered the musicians, who had stopped at some point, and turned to him. “Lord Shiroko, if we may talk a moment in private?”

“Of course, your majesty,” his expression smoothed back into an innocently cute beauty that she had never seen before. He could have passed for barely twenty-something, not the at least 30-something she knew he was.

She shook herself out of her stupor when he snapped his fan shut.

She led him to a nook near one of the walls and cornered him in it, her cape barring the way out for him, unless he stood on it.

“So,” she said, “People can see you now?”

He smirked at her, shedding that soft mask in exchange for a brief flash of fangs. “Only for tonight, kit. As soon as the midnight bells strike twelve, I would be the untouchable ghost upon your shoulder once again.” He paused, “of course, tangibility also means vulnerability,” teeth flashed again. “I look forward to tonight’s assassination attempts.”

She took off her left glove and pressed her bare fingers to his throat. “If you ruin this night for my sister, or for my country, then do not presume that I would hesitate to be as ruthless as you taught me to be.”

He stared down at her from under half-lidded eyes. “And how you have learned,” he praised. “I won’t strike the first blow,” he promised.

That wasn’t a promise not to fight altogether, and she knew he would always obey the letter of the law and not the spirit, but she also knew that it was probably the best she would get out of him.

She put her glove on again hurriedly, trying not to watch him brush frost off his neck.

He leaned down to whisper in her ear as he walked past to leave, “next time, form ice on the tips of your nails to form claws, and we’ll talk.”

She imagined she had a complicated expression on her face as he made a merged back into the crowd.

 

 

She was leaning against a balcony by herself when he found her again.

“The moon whispers to me that it is nearing eleven,” is all that he said, when she didn’t respond to the ghostly shiver in the air that always accompanied his presence.

“An hour left for me to find my assassins,” he reminded her.

“Then I wish you luck,” she told him coldly. She had no wish in getting herself or her country involved in all the mess that would erupt if he did find them.

“Oh I don’t need to,” he told her, leaning on the railing, close enough that she could feel the corpse-chill of his skin. “I just needed to find you.” He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “You and the ugly brood of ducklings that are the assassins after your life.”

She wrenched away from the balcony and her deadly, insane demon of a guardian. A black silhouette flipped over the balcony and landed familiarly, impossibly, perfectly balanced on her feet on the railing.

“Fox,” the assassin spat at him.

“My lady,” he laughed and dipped into a deep, mocking bow, one hand sweeping out with derisive grandeur.

The assassin accepted his hand and stepped down as gracefully as any noble lady descending an imperial staircase.

As soon as the assassin’s feet touched the floor, the assassin was dropping to the ground and throwing him over her shoulder, and off the balcony altogether.

Elsa felt her jaw drop open. She hurriedly shut her gaping mouth and ran to the balcony edge. She had just barely put her hands into the railing when he flipped over, over robe flying away into the night, spectacles missing, two swords at his belt and nearly knocking her down in the process.

The assassin didn’t waste any time, charging at her with knives in hands.

“GUARDS!” she bellowed, “GUARDS!”

She ducked and dodged the first flurry of blows. Just enough time for him to come charging in. She back away from the suddenly furious fight. The guards came charging in.

She motioned them to stay put. If any of them charged in now, he might be hit by accident.

The two broke apart from each other, the assassin panting noticeably heavier than him.

“Lucky queen,” the assassin told her, without glancing away from him for a second, “I doubt that Foxy will let me kill you. I’ll see you another time, Arendelle, ---------”

A squealing buzzing shot through the air, covering up the name the assassin called him. The assassin shot for the railing and dived over the side of the balcony, disappearing into the night.

“Close the gates,” she snapped at the guards, “the party is over. Start searching for the assassin in the morning.”

 

 

She jerked to a stop in the doorway of her office. He was perched on the window ledge of the bay windows in her office _behind her desk_ with large folds of fabric draped over his legs and pooling on the floor, a smattering of pins stuck _through her wall_ , and sewing busily. She strode in stiffly and sat down at her desk and for a while, the only sounds to be heard were the shuffling of papers and his rapid sewing behind her.

“What are you doing?” She asked him. She’d never seen him interacting with something physical that wasn’t her before. With all his talk about corporality, she’d thought that he hadn’t been able to interact with the world at all.

“Sewing one of those coats popular amongst the Arendelle nobility currently,” he told her, a slight irritation surfacing in his voice.

She glanced back to see him scowling and tugging at what was probably a mistake.

“Why would you need to?” She asked and turned to face him, genuinely curious now.

He paused. “You’re Queen now,” he said softly, resuming his sewing, “you’ll need more protection than I can give like this. You are precious to me, kit, so I’ll stand by your side and protect you to the end of your days, even if I must be as vulnerable as you mortals to death.”

“Oh,” she murmured. That was… she’d always thought of him as detached and unaffected, always ruthlessly pushing her to protect herself by any means possible, to never rely on his presence or advice. She’d never thought that he would take such a direct, hands-on approach.

“Welcome to Arendelle, then,” she said firmly, “Lord Protector.”

He paused again, and a slow pleased smile spread across his face. He put down his sewing and swung around until he could slide off the window ledge and onto a bended knee. “I humbly accept this position you grant me, Your Majesty.”

She turned back to her paperwork and heard a rustling of fabric as he returned to the window ledge. Her lips turned up into a smile when she reached the paperwork asking her for her nomination for Lord Protector.

 

 

“Sir Skalfurr, son of Lord Skalfurr, Lord of Demonreach, and Ravn, son of Kråke, mercenary.”

Elsa ignored the unhidden wrinkling of noses, the distaste of her nobles towards her supposedly lower-class candidate, and leaned forward on her throne.

“Begin!” the announcer shouted.

Skalfurr shot forwards, sword flashing in a flurry of slashes. He dodged back, weaving between the slashes, always where the blade wasn’t. Then he was on the offensive, claws flashing in the light, crowding into Skalfurr’s space, not giving the noble enough range to wield his sword effectively.

She made a small, pleased noise when he drew first blood.

She settled back against her chair and pretended not to notice the admittedly discrete betting ring that her nobles were engaged in.

He would win, that she was confident in above all else.

A server came around with a plate of pulled lamb on flatbreads and a small bowl of a creamy sauce garnished with spring onions, thoroughly distracting her. When she looked back, he was straddling Skalfurr, claws positioned carefully over his throat.

“Winner, Ravn!”

 

 

Elsa let her head drop to her desk with a thud. “Why is there so much paper work to running a country,” she complained to him.

“Delegate,” he told her flatly, occupied with his own stacks of papers. “Get someone you trust to help you with matters of the Kingdom, to help you with the paperwork.”

“Delegate?”

He glanced up at that quaver of fear in her voice and must have seen the visible confusion on her face, because he sighed, put his quill down, and walked over. “I apologise, kit,” he said, regret weighing heavy on his shoulders, “I have been so focused on teaching you to _survive_ , that I neglected to teach you how to _rule_.”

 

 

It takes ten years before Elsa learns to calm the raging river of power flowing under her skin, twenty before she learns to smooth away her fears, and less than five for Hans to provide her with reason enough for her to ban him from ever returning to Arendelle, less than five before she missteps and ice flows through her veins and freezes the breath in her lungs and explodes through her fingers. But her people love her, and her unaging Lord Protector stands at her side, and her kingdom flourishes, and life continues breathing anew across her icy kingdom year by year.

Wars are waged, by the Southern Isles for politics and love their for their twelfth son and Prince, but the mountains are her heart and the snow is her blood, and there is no country that can shake the frozen dust from Arendelle’s bones which her standing on the surface of their lake with her clawed, inhuman guardian watching over her, claws full of demon-blue flames.

And the legends of Arendelle’s own Queen of Air and Darkness go on far into the future, nursed into life by the Knight of Winter that had been her shadow and lives forever on in his duty as her knight, guardian, carer.

 

 

“Crowe, Crowe!” the children will shout when they see a young woman sitting by that old fountain that freezes and thaws into the same patterns, year after year, “tells us about the queen of the mountains! About the princess who tamed the sea!”

“You’ve heard this story a thousand times,” she will tell them, “You’ve heard me wax poetic of the girl who could name each individual snowflake, and breathe life into snow, who’s sister counted the glimmering stars in the sky and fought her traitorous fiancé as well as any man.”

And they will insist. “Tell us, tell us! We want to hear of the Queen who shared a heartbeat with the mountains and had snow for blood!”

And she will tell them the stories of her kit for hundred of years, until the city falls to ruins or maybe grows into a metropolis, or until a child with the chill winds in their breath and hail for heart opens their eyes as impossibly blue and pale as hoarfrost.

**Author's Note:**

> Elsa never learns our OC's name, and neither do we. Shiroko, Ravn, Crowe-- all names chosen with purpose, but all discarded with the same irreverence.
> 
> (Shiroko, translating literally to "Child of Shiro(gane)", Shirogane from "Monochrome Factor" having been the original inspiration for our OC; Ravn being Norwegian for "Raven", taken from Corvo from "Dishonored", winner of his own Blade Verbena, and Norway being the place that Arendelle was based off of; Crowe from "Final Fantasy XV", a fierce, brilliant woman who died all too soon.)


End file.
